Filtering an Audience
You can use filters to created targeted audience lists for sending your firm's marketing emails. This can be particularly useful if you have marketing content targeted toward a narrow audience, such as a certain age demographic or matters of a certain practice area.
The first thing to note when determining filters for an audience is that you will have access to different fields for an audience of contacts vs. an audience of matters. In a contact audience, you can only filter by contact fields, where a matter audience can use both contact and matter fields alike.
You will have the option filter your audience lists by fields, as well as by date.
To filter your audience list by fields, first click in the select box next to the words Show If, as shown below:
In this dropdown you will be able to select from any of your fields to use as a filter. In the example above, we are going to filter this matter audience list using a custom matter field called Case Closed. That field is a true/false field, so we only want this list to show matters who have that field selected as True.
We also have the option to add additional filters. Let's say we want to target this audience even further, and only see closed cases in our Personal Injury practice area. To do that, click the add filter button shown above, and then select the practice are field from the drop down box.
Notice that these two filters have an "AND" relationship, shown in blue above. This means that only matters who match BOTH filters will appear in the audience. You also have the option to create filters using an "OR" condition.
Let's consider a new example. Perhaps you want to create an audience list containing matters of your Personal Injury practice area OR your Criminal Defense practice area. To accomplish this, we will delete the case closed filter, add a filter for the criminal practice area, and then click directly on the word AND on the left side of the screen to change it to OR.
Now this audience will include matters that meet either of our two filters. You can continue adding as many additional filters as you would like for your various audiences.
In addition to this filter, you can also use Advanced Conditional Logic to set layered conditions using a combination of both "and" and "or" conditions. Learn all about that here.
You also have the option to filter an audience based on date. You will see this option in the top right corner while editing an audience. Note that there are two different components to filtering based on date:
- The date range itself
- Which date field will be used for the filter
Click in the box underneath the words DATE RANGE, shown below, to select which date field should be used to set the range:
You will have the option to select from any date fields in your CRM, this could be standard fields like Created At, Converted At, or any of your custom date fields, such as Arrest Date, shown in the image above.
It is important to make sure you are selecting the proper date based on how you wish to filter. For example, if I want to create an audience list of clients who have hired this year, this is different than clients who have been created this year. The former will include any matters that converted this year, regardless of when their matter was created. Whereas the latter will only show matters that were created this year.
Once you have determined which field should set the date range, you will then select the range. Note that you can select from dynamic options like "this week" or "last month", or you can set a static date range by selecting Custom.
When using filters like "this month", etc, the audience will dynamically update as time passes.
All of your audience lists will always be dynamically updating, so any time a new contact/matter meets the criteria for an audience, they will automatically be added to the list. Likewise, anytime a contact/matter no longer meets the criteria, they will automatically be removed from an audience list.
Make sure you click the save button at the bottom of the page when you are done editing an automation, to save the list.
FAQ's
My audience says it contains X number of people, but I only see 10 listed. How can I see the rest of the list?
When viewing an audience you will not see the full list of people that meet the criteria, you will just see a preview of 10 people on the list. The best way to view the full list is to create a report (found under the insights tab) with the same filters as your audience. Reports allow you to not only see the full list in Lawmatics, but you can also export to Excel if desired.
How is an audience different from a report?
An audience is created with the specific goal of sending an email to that targeted list. Reports on the other hand are intended to slice and dice your data in an insightful manor for viewing. You cannot send an email to a report.
Should I create an audience of Contacts or Matters?
If you are creating an audience list for sending out general marketing content like a newsletter or a birthday email, then your audience should be of contacts. If you wish to create a more case-specific filtered audience based on fields like practice area, matter status, conversion date, etc, then your audience should be matter type. You will only have access to filter on matter fields if you have created the audience as matter type.